Brucie bonus: Stolen snake Bruce coils around his owner’s arm. David Chance was glad to get him back (Picture: BPM)

A hungover drinker woke up after a night out to be confronted by a 3m (10ft) python he’d bought the night before – rearing up to make a lunge at his sleeping friend.

Dwayne Matthews roused himself to deal with 14kg (31lbs) Bruce, who a court heard he had bought from a gypsy during a heavy session.

He bundled the creature into a cage after covering him with a blanket.

But his brush with the predator still ended painfully – when he took him to a reptile shop and landed in the dock for receiving stolen goods.

Matthews, of Coventry, had planned while drunk to sell the animal for a profit to fund a guttering business, the city’s magistrates court heard.

But when he went to the shop, suspicious staff called police. It turned out Bruce was one of nine snakes stolen from David Chance, 24.

Richard Baker, mitigating, said the 29-year-old did his best to remedy the situation after realising his purchase ‘hadn’t been such a good idea’.

‘Instead of running out of the house and leaving his friend to his fate, he apprehended this snake,’ he said.

‘He ran upstairs, got a quilt and threw it over the snake to subdue it and put it back in the tank. It was like a sub-plot from a Guy Ritchie film. He didn’t decide to get rid of it by dumping it. After going to the shop they were going to give it to Twycross Zoo.’

Magistrates gave Matthews an eight-week prison sentence suspended for two years, ordered him to pay £165 and to have eight weeks supervision.